Egon Schiele's women at Richard Nagy London

More than forty-five drawings and watercolours by Egon Schiele are displayed in a fascinating exhibition at Richard Nagy's gallery in London, from 19 May to 30 June 2011.

Source: Richard Nagy Gallery / theartwolf.com

Focusing exclusively on women, the exhibition at Richard Nagy's new gallery on Old Bond Street provides a rare opportunity to admire works from Schiele's most creative ‘Mature Period’ (1910-1918). The press note released by the gallery points out that "while (Egon) Schiele is recognised as one of the greatest draftsmen of the 20th Century (...) his work is absent from museum collections in the UK and has been given little public attention in the past twenty years".

Schiele was fascinated with the female body, and some of his works are often view as erotic or even pornographic. The press note says that "it is evident in his early nudes of street girls, that he had a young man’s curiosity for the erotic". This 'curiosity' caused him some trouble throughout his career: in 1912 Schiele was arrested for seducing a girl below the age of consent, and then more than a thousand drawings from his studio were seized as 'pornographic'.

Today, Schiele is recognised as one of the most important figurative painters of the early 20th century. In 2006, his landscape “Houses With Mountains” was sold for $22,4 million at Christie's New York.